Rehman Malik must quit..........

The Frontier Post
Editorial
Interior security czar Rehman Malik says money and arms are coming to extremists from across the border. This indeed he has said again and again over the time. But every time he shies away religiously from being specific. He dodges telling who is or who are funneling these deadly supplies to terrorist to kill and main our people and terrorise them. Is it because the fact is too difficult for him to tell? After all, if murderous stuff is coming to them from Afghan Taliban, Rehman would be the first to cry out and shrilly. Haven't he been accusing Baitullah Mehsud of almost every terrorist act and suicide bombing, horrifically taking place in one part or the other of the country almost every day, exacting a huge toll on our hapless people. And he may be right. That thug has himself owned up many such bloody strikes in the past as also in these times. But the question is who is keeping him supplied intermittently with bundles of cash and mounds of sophisticated weapons. The thug is running no mint mills and no arms factory; nor does he own a diamond mine to bankroll his terrorist activities. Years ago, Taliban leader Mullah Omar had expelled him from his Shura council for fighting the Pakistan army instead of the coalition forces in Afghanistan. Then who has been shipping him wades of dollars to buy recruits and suicide bombers, and truckloads of sophisticated weapons to fight pitched battles with Pakistan security forces? Rehman says suicide bombers are from one to all Pakistani nationals. He may be right. He may also be right that suicide bombers are now free lancers, ready to kill themselves and kill others for a price, with the going rate running between Rs. 500,000 and 1,500,000. But who are the buyers of their "services" and wherefrom do those customers themselves get the money? After all, Baitullahs, Fazlullahs and the thugs of their ilk are no billionaires; nor are all those vile lashkars, jaishes and siphas self-financing murder shops. Yet, they demonstrate no stringency of money or arms. They appear richly flush with both, indeed brandishing even weapons and equipment not in possession of even the state security forces. Being the internal security boss, Rehman must be privy to the sources of their generous funding and lethal arms supplies. Yet, he keeps unbrokenly mum on it. Why? And why so intriguingly has he long stopped identifying foreign hand he alludes to even now so often of involvement in militancy here? Hadn't he spoken more than once of the Indians instigating and fueling insurgency in Balochistan? But that was long time ago. He now talks no more of it. Have the Indians terminated their wickedness or has he been ticked off by some powerful ghost not to talk of it? Rehman indeed is a big mystery, hard to crack. Not that he alone is a jigsaw puzzle to comprehend; so is his many a colleague in the federal cabinet, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, as for one. Since ages, this Pakistani top diplomat has been saying that the Americans and the NATO have understood Pakistan's position that foreign operations in its territory are unacceptable and that they have accepted its stance. Yet, there has been no decline in American drone attacks in our tribal areas. Rather, there has been an evident surge in these assaults under the Obama administration, which is threatening to extend them to our settled areas and Balochistan too. Even the military establishment seems having fallen in love for being demonised. Uncontested, it has let go the Americans with public charge that elements of the ISI and the military are hand in glove with Taliban. And unchallenged it is letting them pass around their ruse that our tribal areas have become al-Qaeda's and Taliban's safe havens, even as huge areas, almost 70 percent, of Afghanistan are palpably under Taliban's sway, with district after district in their administrative control. But, all said and done, combating extremism and terrorism at home is Rehman's charge. And he has demonstrated conclusively he is not up to the job. He may be unfit for inherent ineptitude. And if it is for some institutional constraints, it is all the more imperative that he must go. Quit he must at any rate, making way for someone with proven acumen and commanding trust all around. Rehman Malik is not the man to face up to upcoming storm, predictably to be leashed in raging fury for Pakistan by Obama's new strategy for fighting terrorism.
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Dated: Tuesday, April 07, 2009, Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1430 A.H.